FreeBSD 15 probably will include KDE as DE installtion option

Advanced users will, of course, choose the option to install the basic system, and after installation, install a graphical environment. This is only an option for the inexperienced.They will quickly leave anyway because they can't handle configuring the rest of the stuff.
You can always recommend the installation guide to beginners by Vermaden - FreeBSD madness:
vermaden

Thread 'HOWTO: FreeBSD ZFS Madness'

0. This is SPARTA!

Some time ago I found a good, reliable way of using and installing FreeBSD and described it in my Modern FreeBSD Install [1] [2] HOWTO. Now, more then a year later I come back with my experiences about that setup and a proposal of newer and probably better way of doing it.

1. Introduction

Same as year ago, I assume that You would want to create fresh installation of FreeBSD using one or more hard disks, but also with (laptops) and without GELI based full disk encryption.

This guide was written when FreeBSD 9.0 and 8.3 were available and...
  • Thanks
This is Sparta...
]:>
 
If this move is to please FreeBSD devs I think it is fine; but if this move is to attract other geeks to FreeBSD and I dare to say that electing KDE wasn't a smart move... A more complicated DE doesn't not exist even though is really polished...

🙈 🙉 🙊
 
So, if you had to build a framework to support different flavors of things you'd start by building the framework to only support the simplest flavor first?
 
This doesn't affect me personally, I usually install FreeBSD without bsdinstall. However...

It feels rushed and should have been cleaned up first. Looking at the dependencies it currently pulls in, only half of them are needed. Each release of this port also drags in different numbers of them. It feels very Linuxy (drag in some random crap and call it a day).

Yampress said:
They will quickly leave anyway because they can't handle configuring the rest of the stuff.
Click to expand...

Indeed. I know a constant flow of people have been lobbying for this (before disappearing) but they still won't be happy. All this opens the FreeBSD project up to is "why no working GUI network manager? KDE on Linux has one", no Bhyve GUI, no ZFS GUI, no accounts GUIs etc. In some ways this half-working DE makes FreeBSD look less complete somehow.

I note that sysinstall used to provide a KDE and Gnome desktop upon request. This was not kept when moving to bsdinstall. The reasoning and rationale behind this hasn't changed / solved, so we are just going in circles really.
 
kenrap said:
Nope. The X11 support will be going away in Plasma 7, as it's only in maintenance mode in Plasma 6.
Click to expand...
This is a very important point, if true. It is essential to keep X11 as an option, and not to mandate wayland, IMHO. If that is possible.

Oh well, as long as I can still install X11 and windowmaker... pretty please!
 
blackbird9 said:
This is a very important point, if true. It is essential to keep X11 as an option, and not to mandate wayland, IMHO. If that is possible.
Click to expand...
As seen by Gnome 2, it seems that a broken (but more recent) version is preferred by the community, so I wouldn't hold your breath about KDE/X11.

But there will always be (mutiple) Xservers available to run WindowMaker on. I wouldn't worry about that.
 
astyle said:
I expect that the installer will probably need to be able to fallback to the original text-based installation if graphical config fails.
Click to expand...
Beginning with graphical installation is bad enough.

So oft I have the experience that the computer runs the installer with difficulty, if at all,
but the OS runs without problem if one manages to install it in some way.

It is so delightful to install OpenBSD, now hanging, responsive, no indeterministic behavior, no trick necessary.

Why people insist on trash installers? Why?!
 
JohnK said:
So, if you had to build a framework to support different flavors of things you'd start by building the framework to only support the simplest flavor first?
Click to expand...
In this case, yes, that is the right thing. First to careful install the base system without GUI,
then care of installing GUI. Not all at the same time.
 
JohnK said:
So, if you had to build a framework to support different flavors of things you'd start by building the framework to only support the simplest flavor first?
Click to expand...
Duh, that's how all engineering goes... start simple, and build on it. The 4-wheel template goes back to prehistoric times, and now we have harnessed the god of Sun himself to push us around on the 4-wheelers, and go greater distances than were even imaginable when the 4-wheel template was first invented by Zorg the Great...
 
blackbird9 said:
This is a very important point, if true. It is essential to keep X11 as an option, and not to mandate wayland, IMHO. If that is possible.

Oh well, as long as I can still install X11 and windowmaker... pretty please!
Click to expand...
It is true. The KDE developers are going to completely phase out X11 support by the time Plasma 7 is released (which still is a long ways away though).

And they are prepping for it by splitting kwin into two separate packages for Wayland and X11 separately as already evident in our ports tree. The Wayland version is the first-class citizen and the X11 one is on life-support with only fixes to be backported to.

That said, this shouldn't mean that X11 isn't going away. And I sure hope that Xwayland doesn't either because there are still a heck of lot of X11-only applications that still exist and that need that compatibility in Wayland.
 
SirDice said:
As long as it's not enabled by default and an optional choice I have no problems with it.
Click to expand...
I actually do have a problem with it. In my opinion, meaning for my use case, it is a waste of money, brains and time (WOMBAT) to add it to the installer. My use case is servers, more or less headless (at most keyboard and VGA, perhaps serial).

What is worse is the prediction hruodr and other discussed above: The project might move to a graphical installer, which then won't work unless graphical hardware is available. Given the direction the foundation has been working towards in the last year or two, it seems that chasing desktop use of FreeBSD has become the #1 to #10 priority.

Good thing ZFS support on Linux is getting better. Old joke: A smart rat doesn't go down with the sinking ship, it knows where the lifeboats are. Or even better, it leaves the ship in port, when it sees that the hull is leaking and the pumps are not being maintained.
 
ralphbsz said:
The project might move to a graphical installer, which then won't work unless graphical hardware is available.
Click to expand...
😲 Graphical hardware has been available for awhile now... there's GPU's no problem out there, and they can run FreeBSD no problem... Hell, I'm the unofficial AMD GPU expert around here...
 
ralphbsz said:
Old joke: A smart rat doesn't go down with the sinking ship, it knows where the lifeboats are. Or even better, it leaves the ship in port, when it sees that the hull is leaking and the pumps are not being maintained.
Click to expand...
One could argue that's what gave us the bubonic plague..... :)
 
It's difficult for me to express an opinion on this topic. I'm certainly in favor of (optionally) installing a graphical environment, because FreeBSD would attract a large number of users and thus increase its popularity, and developers would then join in. However, I agree with others here that what might be missing are graphical programs for managing system configuration (sysrc, sysctl, pw, etc.), but I'm in favor of introducing this new feature. Time will tell.
 
astyle said:
Graphical hardware has been available for awhile now... there's GPU's no problem out there, and they can run FreeBSD no problem... Hell, I'm the unofficial AMD GPU expert around here...
Click to expand...
You might struggle plugging them into certain server, embedded, "edge" hardware. Or at least with enough force, I am certain you can get them in... but they may not function ;)
 
It's literally an opt-in addition to the installer. No one is pointing a gun to your head forcing you to select "Yes". You can still continue on without it to a vanilla installation.

You people object to this simple idea (that doesn't even touch the base system) but yet complain about FreeBSDs lack of software/hardware support. It's actually pretty abysmal.

Unbelievable.
 
Phishfry said:
This would be a good time to update the motto.

The Power to Serve Idiots.
Click to expand...
I disagree. I don't think offering this option is a bad idea. The current automated options make in the install process incredibly simple. Offering the same type of automation for a graphical session is a great addition to the installer.
 
Here's an idea that "power to serve" members might dislike, so I will apologise in advance - sorry, I don't mean to deliberately upset, just throwing an idea out there that I believe could make this even better:

How about this: If the installer detects that the computer supports running a GUI, then the default to install a DE (or other type of GUI) changes from "no" to "yes".

I got this idea from having watched a video by probono or whatever his name is who created helloSystem about his installation UI design choices: If you can detect something in the hardware, such as the info about the keyboard, then the installer should default to that keyboard model and language etc. (but it's only the default, you still have the ability to choose something else).

This is only an idea, of course. I'm sure the Foundation and developers will prioritise and implement whatever makes more sense. And I do understand of course that this would require potentially quite a lot of work. It's just that if we want something really polished, then this might be the kind of thing you'd also want.
 
kpedersen said:
You might struggle plugging them into certain server, embedded, "edge" hardware. Or at least with enough force, I am certain you can get them in... but they may not function ;)
Click to expand...
Y'know, there's a reason why there's support for specific architectures (like ARM, AArch, amd64, and others)... And what about CD/DVD/USB stick images? for each architecture? Those big ISO's are frankly not a bad candidate for using that graphical installer. We also have the 'bootonly' iso available for download... for nearly every supported architecture. Sometimes I wonder if this thread is even worth taking very seriously here...
 
ralphbsz said:
I actually do have a problem with it. In my opinion, meaning for my use case, it is a waste of money, brains and time (WOMBAT) to add it to the installer. My use case is servers, more or less headless (at most keyboard and VGA, perhaps serial).
Click to expand...
Well, your use case is not the only one it seems.
 
astyle said:
Y'know, there's a reason why there's support for specific architectures (like ARM, AArch, amd64, and others)... And what about CD/DVD/USB stick images? for each architecture?
Click to expand...
I think there are two assumptions being made.
  1. Lack of GPU is architecture dependent. This is not the case. You can get headless amd64 servers
  2. Our CD/DVD/USB stick images are custom for each platform. This is also not the case. Other than architecture, the userland and installer is identical
I agree that a big DVD is a good candidate for a default desktop. GhostBSD et al do provide this already.
 
There is absolutely nothing scary in the news. The developers want to expand the capabilities of the installer - expand.
Minor news from the "white noise" category.
 
I think that at some point, the installer should display a window to choose the installation type:
- Installing the base system without a desktop environment
- Installing the KDE desktop environment on Wayland
- Installing the GnomeFlashback desktop environment on Wayland (gnome-flashback-desktop)

https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeFlashback , gnome3 - with the gnome 2 look)A pretty decent desktop environment looks like gnome 2/mate, but there's gnome3, which is the latest technology on Wayland.It's worth going straight to the newer Wayland technology, since KDE and gnome support it and have been working well on it for a long time.
If you want to install KDE or another Windows desktop environment on X11/Xorg, choose the base system installation option, and after installation, you can install the desktop environment solution you want. And then nothing is imposed.

For beginners, there would be two graphical environments for Wayland;
I also recommend that the installer offer at least two graphical environments for Wayland. One for QT enthusiasts – KDE, and the other for GTK enthusiasts – Gnome Flashback.
For advanced users, only the base system would be installed, and after installing it, the advanced user could install whatever they want (X11 + KDE/Mate/Xfce/Cinammon/Openbox/Fluxbox/Other...).

As a long-time Debian Linux user(2002-) and (Freebsd of course (2006-), I suggest taking a look at the Debian Linux installer and how it handles these installation steps. The installer gives the user a choice at each installation step. Initially, the installer allows the user to choose whether to run the installer in text/graphical/normal or expert mode, and then mix these modes, or choose other modes, such as rescue mode or chroot. Then, at each step of the installer, we have a choice, partitioning, and then what we want in the system: the base system or any additional graphical environments.

]:>
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top